Number Of Coups Up But Still Below Historical Highs

The number of coups, coup attemps and conspiracies to overthrow a government rose substantially around the world since 2021. This is according to data collected by the University of Illinois Cline Center Coup d’État Project. The researchers found between 14 and 16 such events each year recently, up from mostly single-digit results in the 2000s and 2010s. The number of successful coups also rose, hitting seven in 2021 and five in 2024, up from a maximum of four in the previous decades. 

However, as Statista’s Katharina Buchholz reports, the numbers, however, do not surpass earlier counts from the 1960s or 1970s, when an average of 20 coups and attempts per year were the norm, including up to 18 successful ones annually.

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Coups, attempted coups and conspiracies took part on all continents in 2024, the data shows, and included widely reported government overthrows in Bangladesh, Syria and Haiti. The numbers also include more technical coups that did not cause as much media attention, for example in semi-constitutional monarchies where monarchs and elected officials share power. In May, the emir of Kuwait dissolved the country’s parliament just one month after elections and suspended certain constitutional provisions for four years.

In the three years prior, successful coups in Africa drove up the count, specifically in Gabon, Niger, Burkina Faso, Chad, Guinea, Mali, Sudan and Tunisia. Successful coups also took place in Sri Lanka and Kazakstan in 2022 (the latter classified as an autocoup) as well as Afghanistan and Myanmar in 2021. Attempted coups and conspiracies also repeatedly touched Europe and other developed countries, including last year’s attempt in South Korea (as well as conspiracies in Armenia, Belarus and Ukraine in 2024 and in Moldova in 2023). The events of January 6, 2021, in Washington D.C. are also listed in the database as an attempted coup and the Reichbürger movement arrests in Germany in 2022 as a conspiracy.

Since the end of the Second World War, there have been more than 450 successful coups worldwide. In the 1960s, there were 103 while between 1970 and 1979, there were 95. Previous to 2021, this had dropped considerably to an average of just 22 successful coups per decade since the turn of the millennia. If extrapolated, the current tally would be the equivalent of 38 coups in the current decade – almost double the previous decades’ count.

The question is – after today’s chaos, will we see another one in Ukraine anytime soon?